Scott Wykoff's Blog

Friday, September 23, 2016

Fitting For Ferris

Though he’s a Marylander now living here in Clarksville,
Ferris Allen will always be a Virginian at heart.So it goes without saying that the Old Dominion’s all-time
winning trainer will be at Laurel Park on Saturday.As odd as it sounds, that’s because the “track by the tracks”
here in Maryland will be the mecca for Virginia racing. And he doesn’t even
have a horse entered for the 11-race card.What? Let me explain.Right off the bat. Saturday is Commonwealth Day at Laurel
Park. As in the Commonwealth of Virginia
Day. With an 11-race card focused on Virignia-breds, including 8 on the turf.A day of racing that surely will put a smile a furlong wide on Ferris' face

Since Virginia’s only Thoroughbred track Colonial Downs just
off of I-64 between Richmond and Williamsburg shutdown 2 years ago, the
Maryland Jockey Club has been hosting racing days a couple times a year
featuring Virginia-bred and sired horses.And there’s nobody in these parts who knows more about
Virginia-bred and sired horses than Ferris Allen.While he has always been a force to be reckoned with in Maryland
be it at Laurel or Pimlico, the 64-year-old native of Varnia, Va. and graduate
of William & Mary has made a name for himself winning races in his home
state, or as this blogger should say, his home commonwealth.A licensed trainer for 42 years with more than 2,000 career
wins, Allen has established himself as one of the most successful horsemen and
popular people on a Maryland backstretch he has called home since 1979. Of the
eight stakes worth $850,000 in purses that help comprise the Commonwealth Day
program, one holds a special place in his heart.

While Ferris be focused on the many Virginia-breds that will
be running on Saturday at Laurel, he’ll especially have an eye on the 9 horses
running in the 10th race.
That’s because it’s the Bert Allen Stakes. Named after the same Bert
Allen who is Ferris’ dad!The $60,000 Bert Allen for 3-year-olds and up at 1 1/16
miles on the grass is named for Allen’s late father, a longtime owner and
breeder in Virginia who died Jan. 9, 2011 on his family’s 13-acre Warwick
Stables farm at the age of 87.Previously run as the John D. Marsh Stakes, the Bert Allen
was renamed for the 2011 summer meet at Colonial Downs. As fate would have it,
Ferris Allen was the first winner of his father’s race with a 3-year-old
gelding named Deputy Fling.“For the people of Virginia to have the understanding of
what my dad meant to the spirit of Virginia racing, to name a race after him
was really special,” Allen said. “I would have to say winning the inaugural
running of the race would have to be certainly the emotional highlight of my
career. What happened on that day was nothing short of incredible. It’s one of
those stories about racing that almost never happens anymore.”

To that end, you can understand why the winner’s circle photo
(above) from Jim McCue means so much to Ferris as it’s jammed
with friends and family members on hand for the occasion. And it now is
prominently displayed on a wall in Allen’s Clarksville that home that this
blogger drives-by everyday on his way to work. The photo overlooks the third
floor dining room where Bert Allen sat at his reserved table nearly every
racing day.

Ferris Allen grew up with horses. His father ran an
automotive business and tended to horses on their farm, and every spring on
Preakness Day would host six races over a three-furlong track on the property
for donkeys, ponies, quarter horses and thoroughbreds. “My dad was a
working-class guy that loved horses, and because he loved horses he came to
love horse racing,” he said. “He was not a guy that had a lot of money or had
the wherewithal to throw a lot at it, but he was so passionate about it that
basically anybody that had anything to do with horses, unless they were a
crummy person, became my dad’s best friend.”Allen was galloping horses by age 11 and racing at 13,
graduating from Varnia High School, where he would return to teach government
and coach baseball after earning a degree from William & Mary, where he was
a standout in the classroom and on the diamond. He took out his trainer’s
license in 1974 and by 1977 he had gone from teaching students to horses on a
full-time basis.

“Right after I got out of college I got my trainer’s license
because we had some horses on the farm. It was your typical hobbyist farm
operation where we had a few horses and when we could, we would take them to
Charles Town to race them,” Allen said. “My last year of teaching school I had
over 100 starters, so that gives you an idea of where my life was going. I
decided I could go back to teaching if I wanted to, but it was a really good
time in my life to try training horses. The rest is kind of history.”

Long based at Laurel’s Barn 26, Allen would go on to lead
all Maryland trainers in victories in 1999 and ranked in the state’s top 10 for
16 consecutive years from 1995 to 2010 while topping the $1 million mark in
purse earnings 15 straight years from 1997 to 2011. He picked up career victory
No. 2,000 with From Jump Street on Dec. 18, 2011 at Gulfstream Park.This blogger knows firsthand how tough it has been for
Ferris over the last few years with the closing of Colonial Downs not having a
track to race horses in Virginia near where he both grew-up and went to college. We talked about just that one afternoon just
a few weeks ago while watching some races at Laurel Park.One or two days of Virginia-bred racing here in Maryland
surely won’t fill the void left for Ferris after the closing of Colonial Downs,
but at least on days like this at Laurel Park he can enjoy the sport he grew
to love so much in his native Virginia at least for a couple days each year in his adopted home state of
Maryland and at the track he called home for so many years.Ferris and the Allen family deserves it!